10/28/2010

Having a hard time keeping your gear in good condition?Its hard to find similar weapons in the wasteland and even harder to make repair kits (never made one yet).Thats why you need to have lvl 90 (yeah) Repair skill by lvl 14 and you get the perk called: Jury Rigging, which makes your repair screen do this: Basically allow you to repair similar kinds of weapons with each other (rifles with rifles, pistols, energy weapons, etc) And don't forget in some cases, a fully repaired item is worth much more than many crappy conditioned items of the same kind.Wondering where all the companions are? I've found quite a few of them:ED-E - an eye robot, similar to the ones in Fallout 3; found in the Primm Mojave Express (post office), you'll need rather high repair, science or find some parts to fix itPros: the perk allows you to see enemies very far awayCon: at the beginning, it has a crappy laser doing very little damage

Rose Cassidy - a caravaner that uses a shotgun; found at the Mojave Outpost which is an NCR camp in the south west corner of the map where there are the huge statues. You'll need to complete a quest by the Caravaners which unfortunately is right outside of New Vegas and will need high speech or barter.Con: the perk you get from her isn't that great (makes whiskey less damaging)

Veronica - a Brotherhood of Steel scribe, found at the 188 Trading Post which is 7/8th of the way to the Strip. You'll need an intelligence or atleast a nice opinion of the Brotherhood to get her to join you.Perk: talking to her activates a reloading benchPro: she's melee and one hit kills baddies

Boone - an NCR sniper, found at Novac which is about 3/4 the way to the strip; you need to do a quest to find out who sold his wife into slavery (hint: Jeanie May)Pro: snipes baddies from huge distancesCon: can't play him if you're evil, and his perk is only ok (when you target baddies, their whole body glows red for easier identification)

Raul - a ghoul found at the top of Black Mountain; it'll be very hard when you're low level as its full of Super Mutants and Nightkins. Freeing him allows you to add him to your party.Pro: his perk rocks which decreases the deterioration of your gearCon: I don't think he fights very well..

Rexx - a dog with mechanical parts; haven't got this one yet, but you'll probably have to do a quests for the Kings in the area before the Strip to open this companion up.Perceived Pro: high damage and armor?Perceived Con: not a very talkative companion

10/25/2010

Busy busy busy days.. very little time to write anything and have the brainpower at home to write. Fable 3 is out tomorrow (or depending when you read this, today). Can't get that yet, spent alot of money on photography related items and going on a trip in January.Fallout New Vegas is very fun. Deceptively big; alot of large instanced areas. I did get stuck at one point looking for a medical equipment for Caesar.... so i made a new guy.

What would my blog be without a link to some cosplay? This time from BlizzCon.Sneaky sneaky.

As a guy, one would naturally cringe at the thought of going to a baby shower, or an all girl birthday party and being the only guy. I've been pleasantly surprised with the great time i've had. Maybe because I was the main photographer, but they're not always man-killing events.Alice in Wonderland theme if you're wondering.

Life is all about trade-offs. To get something, you need to sacrifice something else. By going to the all-girl party, I missed the Toronto Zombie Walk where people dress up as zombies and walk around the downtown core. This apparently took place in Australia as well.Instead of photos of zombies, I got pictures of girls.. good trade off :D

10/24/2010

So the drama of the other day was the Steam cloud not being able to connect to the game which resulted in the game only saving the actual manual saved game versus the f5 quick save games. Quick saved games did not save when you exited the game, so watchout. So essentially 3-4 hours progress wasted. Perks lost. Everything. Spent about 45 minutes waiting for Steam to be able to connect. Not impressed. I've started manually saving the game every 10-15 minutes which is very inconvenient when you're supposed to have a quick save function.

That being said, in 5+ separate sessions, the game only crashed once and I believe that is from pressing too many keys at once due to playing a melee character (but that is still not a good things). I haven't seen too many other bugs, other than that glaring save game bug. Its fixed now... soo.. yay... (rolls eyes) I imagine it is hard to create AI for countless npcs as I find they normally randomly all crowd into a small room, afraid to be alone.

That being said, its fun, exactly like the original Fallout 3, with new perks, gambling, ammo crafting (slowly understanding how it works and its very helpful), factions (Rangers are sneaking up on me and threating me to be good with their faction).

Lvl 7 and still no house.. which is unfortunate.. not many vendors, so strength is rather important, as well as repair to increase the condition and thus reduce your load. I wonder if you can store excess items in a random house either on the floor or in containers and whether it will save it, or whether it will eventually erase it and fill it with trash.

Other things of note:Alot of invisible walls.. which breaks immersion.Alot of strong monsters. Deathclaws and giant radscorpions really scare me now.Weapon mods are pretty cool, though i've only found a few and they're weapon specific.Stimpaks no longer heal limb injuries, a separate item called the doctor's bag is required and there isn't many in the game at this point.Its nice to see a blue sky.. the Mohave desert seems alot more clean than DC with all the decrepit buildings.I've found 2 followers, a Brotherhood of Steel troublemaker and an Eyebot... both made of paper..

10/21/2010

Thanks to a stressful work week, ill go on a rant and say:I hate Steam.It makes panda's sad.Causes world hunger, poverty and cancer.Is the love child of Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell.Makes the Tea Party look like a legit political party.Even Lindsay Lohan thinks they suck.

I've never liked the mandatory connection to the program to be able to play games. What happens if you lose internet connection, what then? What happens if the Steam server is down, how can we play the game that we've bought?

Answer: You can't.

I'm finding out that your save files exist on a cloud and it needs to sync with Steam to be able to access it. Imagine how disconcerting it is to open up the game and load your last file to find out, "hey, this isn't my character... wtf?" And then look at your save files and see that your last file that was saved was the manual save file (I quick save every 5 minutes) that was only the first hour into the game while your current file should be a good 4 hours.

I dunno; I understand the need to protect one's game from piracy, but this is unacceptable. If I bought the game solely from Steam, i'd understand if I needed to be connected, but when I buy a physical copy, I want full access at all times. I'm seriously thinking about not buying any games that require a constant connection anymore a la Steam and just pirate it. So you want to prevent piracy but actually push people towards it. Thanks.

10/20/2010

I saw it, read up on it, but didn't think too much about it.Achievements in Fallout New Vegas.Like this one, while in the desert, I was randomly killing mutated ants, or radscorpions for experience, and on my 50th kill, I got the achievement and an associated perk (passive buff): Bug Stomper.Granted, it didn't tell me how much I was buffed, its still something new I can work on in the game.

Note: Friend of the Night perk is amazing; when it gets dark, your eyes get attuned to the darkness and it becomes incredibly bright (not daylight, but you don't fear the dark anymore). BUT it doesn't always work; especially indoors. Still when it works, its marvelous.

10/19/2010

BEWARE: even if you have a physical copy of the game purchased from say EB/Bestbuy, you still need to connect to Steam to play it... so buying it from Steam may just be easier. If I knew this, i would have pre-ordered from Steam and get the special dlc.

Hardcore modeInteresting new perks and traits per above.Bad thing:It feels exactly like the original Fallout 3. That could be a good thing too; but it just seems like its somewhere else. It makes me feel I bought a big expansion; we'll see in a few days whether I still feel like that.

10/18/2010

I'm going to any Halloween parties this year as probably a card guard from Alice in Wonderland.. but I think I should be my favorite: Red Knight from Castle Crashers.Find more NY Comic Con cosplayers: here and here.

10/14/2010

I was planning to post this in a few days, but it'll be old news by then:

At first when i read this article by EA Louse, on why Warhammer Online failed, I was incensed at another critical person saying a game that I loved had failed: yes, they had a million subs at launch and it has dwindled down below 300k; but last time I checked, thats not too bad, 300k times 15$ is 4.5 million dollars a month.. not too shabby. And due to the loss of expected revenue, there has been job losses in the company. Thing is, content is being created albeit maybe slowly. Bugs are being fixed, server speed is increase/becoming more stable. People love the game still.This photo has no significance to this article, just something I took over the weekend ;)

I believe in the possibility that Mythic had/have incompetent people who were yes-men which made their employees and loyal customers suffer.

My argument: why are there so many yes-men employed in Mythic? Does no one have an operating brain there? Yes, upper management doesn't have the courage to speak up, but that is not a legitimate excuse for the lower ranks to duck their heads into the sand and pretend it'll go away. You deserve to live in constant fear, lose your job and be unhappy.

People use the word "failed" so casually that it has lost meaning; I see two ways in which it has legitimately failed:1. They do not have the subscription numbers that they did on launch2. They don't have the same revenue FROM subscriptions as launch.As you see, they're linked. Its only natural to let people go/fire people if you're making less money. It only makes sense: you budget a headcount of people you need to support a game for a certain number of subscriptions. How often are people's forecasts perfectly accurate? So it wasn't accurate; the game wasn't perfect; and maybe rushed.Something was unaccounted for. People aren't patient, especially when they're paying good money each month for 'slow' changes. I say 'slow' b/c its not actually slow but probably an acceptable time frame as programming isn't easy, especially if it was rushed originally. People are impatient, rage quit, subscriptions go down. Word of mouth gets out about the flaws, friends tell friends they aren't playing and thats enough to convince them to quit too. Subscriptions continue to decrease. A new game comes out and tourists leave. Subs drop. The game gets old/stale.. people dont' want to wait for expansion content, they quit too. Subs get below 300k, people panic and quit too.

If thats all an mmo is about, whether original launch subscription numbers are retained if not increased, then yes it failed b/c its less than what it was originally. Last time I checked most mmo's numbers decrease over time. And if anything these subscriptions fluxuate. Huh.

Case in point: Mythic brought in the endless trial; it increased subscriptions and enticed new players into the game. More subs, more money. Failed still? I think thats a win. Not back to 1million but still not bad as it got me back and playing for about 5 months.

Is less than 300k in sub numbers something to scoff at? Not really; they make money each month. Firing excess people is a fact of life; sorry for the loss of jobs, but thats business. If they need more people, who are they going to get, a person off the street or something partially trained by the company?

The game failed b/c the game is broken; what game is perfect? What is perfect in one person's eyes is different in another. WoW isn't perfect; its just really popular. BUT not everyone plays it; just because its the most highly subbed game doesn't make it perfect; it just may be the most polished and caters to most people's needs.

I haven't checked the last numbers on the amount of players on Warhammer these days, but there ARE people that play the game who love it. And to me, thats what important. True failure is when a company *cough APB* needs to close their servers forever. No subscriptions. Nothing

This is my second time of playing Guild Wars 1... in anticipation of Guild Wars 2, i decided to buy the original on Steam when I couldn't figure out how to log in with my original account.... and after some trial and error.. i found out i could have just used my old account! bah!FYI: You need to enter your account name, password AND a character's full name. I've never seen a game that requires you to put a character's name in as well; I would enter my acct name and password and get an invalid password error and it would drive me up the wall. I always thought the secret question was if you forgot your password. Hope that helps people.Your account name needs to have "@ncsoft" as well at the end..

Anyways.. I bought the trilogy on Steam.. to accomplish a few things:1. Get back into Guild Wars and prepare for Guild Wars 22. Get some achievements in the Hall of Monuments that will translate into rewards in GW23. Learn the backstory

After looking at what i need to get the rewards in GW2, i've lost interest in it as I don't believe ill be able to get many.. nor will want to play a Hunter class (always play that kind of class).. mostly b/c it will take alot of time, grinding required and probably will need help from a guild...

Some highlights include:

- I like the concept of dual professions; how you combine the traits, abilites and skills of two classes and become a hybrid

- graphics for the trilogy isss.. old graphics.. i can't wait for GW2.. the trailers look fantastic of the graphics- as the game progresses, movement becomes more fluid and there are better tutorials

- I have a feeling being connected to Steam increases my ping... so unless I can't get it otherwise, ill continue to buy the physical game instead of playing it on a cloud

- one good thing about the dl from Steam is i got some bonus items (in Nightfall atleast), by just /bonus, it'll generate items.. not bad makes me much more powerful in the beginning

- i haven't found uses/how to for crafting yet (ill have to read up on that... links please), and whether it's worth it

- the expansions (?) Factions and Nightfall both have their own cultural themes; Factions being an asian/japanese theme, while Nightfall is a more Egyptian theme

- Nightfall (atleast at the beginning) emphasizes working in groups.. and has the ability to have a party full of npcs; i like that alot

So there are good points .. and bad; the bad mostly due to the age of the game. I'm excited for GW2 and the things i've read and seen. I don't think i'll get Eye of the North unless people (comments please! lol)think its critical or vastly different that the previous campaigns.

10/13/2010

FINALLY.I'm not too sure who I trust less, Taverncraft or Mythic for taking forever to send me the stein.. per a previous blog, I was going to cancel my order early September but only held off b/c of the email I received that it would come in the middle of the month *cough-its-mid-october-now-cough*. Though i'm happy it finally came in, I would never recommend Taverncraft and i'd be hesitant with Mythic.

10/12/2010

Tobold's recent blog http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-changes.html indicates he's a bit burnout from the rigors of blogging. (didn't i write that before?)I feel bad for the guy; I LOVE to blog and love to write. Its too bad he doesn't feel the passion for it, and suffers when trolled. Its the price of being a popular blog though: the burnout from writing frequently and having unique (see: opinionated) views in the internet community will do that to you.

I've personally tried reading some of his entries but don't frequent it, nor have him on my blogroll. Its mostly a case that he sticks to his favorite games (WoW), which i'm not too interested in.. which is the main reason to adding (or not adding) fellow bloggers.

Some things of note:

- I understand when he says he feels stretched thin, 10 entries a week is quite impressive, especially for a single blogger; I wish I had a talented friend that would help contribute some posts so the site could be more popular, inject some different topics and outlooks, but I believe their passions are more of the playing variety than writing; I actually have another blog and a fulltime job .. so finding topics to write about is a challenge and there are long stretches which I ignore that other blog

-Trolls suck. They're a fact of life in this internet age.. its sad though; that people have so much time on their hands to harrass him.. but i suppose thats their own perogative. I don't have (thankfully **knock on wood**) trolls but I have comment moderation on my site mostly as I don't like spam, and the site name with 'unlock' makes spammers think the blog/article is related to cell phone unlocks and I have no interest in helping them

-The benefits to blogging; its a creative release for me and the notoriety and community are nice benefits. Even if it was for one reader, I would continue to write.. and if i didn't have any readers.. i'd still write: its fun, plain and simple to talk about your passion. I don't ask for, nor need, gifts from other people nor free games from companies no matter how popular I become.. just don't think that way. If I really wanted it, I would petition the company to look at my site for proof of my devotion and writing notoriety.

- in regards to negativity; i've learned over the years that we humans are pretty negative in nature; we're more likely to complain about something, rather than appreciate, compliment or thank someone. But I understand once again, being constantly bombarded with negative comments/people will affect us; I remember I had a close friend, he was funny, outgoing, generous.. but had one flaw, he was always depressed and negative. I found it harder and harder to hang out with him b/c I would become depressed and think more negatively.

As always, I thank any and all visitors for coming and reading; I hope something I write about has touched you in some way, if not ill keep doing so and maybe ill surprise you one day. Farewell to those that leave us, and hope to see you again in the future

10/10/2010

Happy Thanksgiving for my friends, family and fellow Canadian bloggers....but don't worry my American bloggers.. I'll be at work tomorrow (eyes his American merchants)... grrrr....And Happy SLAPSgiving to everyone else!

10/07/2010

Borderland fanboy article?Not this time (collective sigh of relief from everyone)Lol

Today is about Fallout: New VegasI'm excited for it, as it has a greater emphasis on different factions you can play for and not just for the 'good guys.' I'm hoping its a big world and will require lots of playthroughs to experience all the content. Not sure whether I want to preorder the game via Steam... I want the pre-order bonuses.. but I don't like not having the physical copy(dvd) in my hands... and i don't like to download anything more than a couple Gigs..

10/05/2010

I'll say one thing about the new Borderlands DLC ... its chock-FULL of epic loot. There are certain lockers that 95% of the time has a small money drop or 1 reload of ammo. There is less than a 5% chance of it containing a pistol or class mod (which boosts your talents). After a boss battle, the treasure room only has 2 major red chests (which can hold a combination of weapons or mods plus grenades and ammo) and tons of lockers.

Every single locker contained a rare (blue) or better (epic or legendary) weapon or mod. The following screenshots was my inventory AFTER i dropped some rares and even some epic items..EVERY. SINGLE. LOCKER.It was sick.

1 major complaint; my lvl 61 hunter is not getting any experience at all; not because he's defeating really weak enemies (they're about lvl 55ish), but b/c its glitched. Fix plz Gearbox.

10/04/2010

Lack of posts last week due to some good work related happenings; basically chosen for a product development group that is actually rolling out next week. It was very thinking-intensive, so i'd come home mentally exhausted; it was great though.

Been basically playing the new Borderlands DLC (great to play again, but I have too many alts and all above lvl 50). One of the biggest problems in the new dlc is that there is no rocket ammo at the vending machines!! WTF is that?I'd insert a picture, but the game is proving me wrong with my lvl 61 that it's probably just a level requirement... bah! You won this round Gearbox!

Haven't played Civilization 5 for quite a while.. don't get me wrong, its a fantastic game; its just its too addictive. You'll be stuck there staring at the screen for hours on end instead of getting anything productive done!! Its VERY hard to just jump on and play for an hour. VERY hard.

Very excited still for Guild Wars 2; i'd post some links, but running out of time; check out Hunter's Insight on the latest and greatest.

10/03/2010

When you see the CN Tower lit up in purple and think:"Epic loot drop!!! Mine!!"I've been playing the new DLC (sorry; its actually 800 points) for Borderlands.. its pretty good. Great drops; with my lvl 61, i've got 2 gold drops every 15 minutes. My lvl 11 character opened a chest there, and out popped a blue and a purple. Sick. I'll provide a better review soon; haven't had much time to play through it (i like to play with friends).